


a kiss on the cheek and a punch to the gut

by snowdarkred



Series: alive with the glory of love [5]
Category: The Losers (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Backstory, F/M, M/M, Rule 63
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-04
Updated: 2012-01-04
Packaged: 2017-10-28 21:36:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/312415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snowdarkred/pseuds/snowdarkred
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Roque thought of Jocelyn "Jake" Jensen like a friendly stray dog: she was all tail wags and smiles, right up until you cornered her and she ripped your throat out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a kiss on the cheek and a punch to the gut

**Author's Note:**

> My love for Roque knows no bounds. Don't judge me.

Roque was born into a world where the strong stayed strong through savagery and dirty deals, and the weak stayed weak by being unwilling to do what was necessary to survive. He figured out early in life that he would rather be the guy at the top of the food chain than the one quivering at the bottom. His upbringing ground it into him, his Army training polished it, and Clay gave it focus, in all the wrong ways.

 

\---

 

Back when he was a kid, when he was known as  _Will_ , before he worked his way up the food chain, Roque used to sit on the back steps of the projects his family lived in and watch as his older brother hurt things. He tortured whatever he could get his hands on: bugs, mice, rats, frogs, cats, and eventually dogs. Roque would watch as blood dripped down the short edges of Dray's pocketknife, as the creatures would cry in terror and pain. His brother got off on it; he was always looking for the next target, the bigger prey.

He worked his way up. Day after day, he built little prisons of misery, until one day he tried to go for prey too dangerous.

They showed it on the news, when they found his brother's body.  _A tragedy_ , they called it, like they had any idea what it had been like to live with him.  _Obscene._  Roque wanted to spit in their faces, all of them, for their empty condolences and even emptier platitudes. What the fuck did they know about his family? About his brother?

 

\---

 

Roque had hidden the bloody pocketknife under his pillow. Sometimes, when he was feeling helpless or scared, he gripped it tight in the palm of his hand and remembered the sounds of frightened animals.

 

\---

 

He signed up for the Army because it was either that or the streets. He didn't have a noble cause, and he didn't feel any sort of dedication to his country. He really just had one talent, and that was pain. He knew pain better than anyone, and he was better at giving it than, well. Than his brother. Soldiers needed to know pain: how to resist it, how to give it, how to work through it. He figured he'd already have a leg up.

Of course, it didn't hurt that he turned out to also have a talent for straight up killing. But then, he already knew that.

 

\---

 

Clay was the first person who made him feel somewhat grounded. He just felt  _less_  around Clay, and that was a relief. It was like his whole life had been just the roughest, clearest, jaggedest of edges, but Clay smoothed them down. Clay was sharp where Roque was worn smooth, and Roque was sharp where Clay was soft, and it made a sick kind of sense.

They just worked. You know, when Clay wasn't dating crazy women. (Unfortunately, all of Clay's women were crazy. It was a universal rule.) Roque became a Loser.

 

\---

 

When Clay first told the Losers that their next tech was going to be a chick, all Roque could think was,  _Please, fuck, don't let her be crazy._ But then Clay told them about what her old unit had done to her (the fuckers; even Roque knew that that was a fucking terrible thing to do, fuck) and it had been made perfectly clear that Jocelyn Jensen was off limits. To everyone.

 

\---

 

When they met her, she had been smiling and blunt.

“Call me Jensen, or Jake if you must,” she said, mouth running at a mile a minute – and Roque had thought that that was just a quaint phrase until he met her. “Anyone who calls me Jocelyn, or any variant thereof, gets their foreskin cut off. Call me Jenny, and it'll be the whole dick. And your balls.”

She smiled, but Roque could see that she meant every word.

 

\---

 

Jensen acted like she didn't have a care in the world, but that was what it was, an act. She reminded him of a stray dog that would follow you everywhere, tail wagging, right up until someone put her back to a corner and she tore their goddamn throat out.

He could respect that. Plus, Clay was completely uninterested in her sex life.

 

\---

 

Roque knew that if he'd been born with tits and a vagina, Clay would have been all over him. Her. Whatever. This knowledge did strange things to his insides whenever he thought about it.

 

\---

 

Roque didn't know when to stop pushing. He knew this about himself, and he embraced it like he did all his character flaws. They were the marks on his soul that distinguished him, that made him different from everyone else, better. He pushed at boundaries until they broke; he pushed at people until they snapped. He pushed at himself until he tore apart and collapsed, and then he rebuilt himself from the fragments and smoldering ashes left behind, because that was what he did. The law of the jungle.

The law of the fucking jungle.

 

\---

 

When Cougar and Jensen had started their  _sort-of, not-really, who-the-fuck-even-knows_  relationship, Roque had taken it upon himself to take Cougar aside and lay down the law. It had just felt like the right thing to do, even if he had felt like a complete fucking moron while he did it.

He just didn't want to see Jensen get hurt any more.

 

\---

 

Roque had a reoccurring nightmare:

_He is sitting on the steps. He is watching his brother nail something small to the ground. It whimpers and cries something awful. His brother demands help, and he gets up, intending to do as he asks, because it's never worth the pain that comes if he doesn't. When he stands, he is a grown man, and he can see clearly over his brother's shoulder, and he realizes with horror that his brother is hurting—_

And then he woke up.

 

\---

 

There was one time when Clay and Roque and Cougar were out getting drunk – it was Pooch's turn to babysit Jensen at the safe house, not that she technically needed it or anything; it was just safer to have someone watching her back while she did impossible things on the computer – and they came across Jensen's former CO.

He is now officially listed as MIA. They will never find the body.

Through mutual, silent agreement, they all chose not to talk about that night ever again.

 

\---

 

Being a soldier meant seeing and doing horrible, unspeakable things. Roque could handle it; he'd always been able to handle it.

Seeing twenty-five kids die was fucking awful, but it didn't change and define him the way it did Clay. It didn't make him fall to his knees and pray to a God who hadn't shown an interest yet, like Cougar. It didn't make him question himself like it did Pooch. It didn't leave him speechless, robbed of words, like it did Jensen. It didn't make him feel anything. And it was that knowledge, that realization, that made Roque aware that what everyone had said to him for so long was actually true.

He really was a monster.

A numb, inhuman monster.

 

\---

 

Fucking Aisha. Just—fucking Aisha. She fucked everything up. It had been fine until she had come along; he had just been on the verge of breaking through to Clay, and then she— 

She was just Clay's type, and Roque. Roque was just fucking tired of it all.

 

\---

 

Every time he looked at Clay, he felt the same helpless, burning anger, and Roque? Fucking hated feeling helpless.

 

\---

 

They had said,  _Be faster._  And he was.

They had said,  _Be stronger._  And he was.

They had said,  _Be harder._  And he was.

They had said,  _Never leave anyone alive._  So he didn't.

 

\---

 

 _Kill them cleanly,_  he had told the guards.  _Don't fuck around. They will get loose and kill you if you even try. Don't drag it out._

Of course, no one ever listened to him, did they?

 

\---

 

 _You will die badly,_  Clay told him.

Well,  _duh_. Roque had known that he was going to _die badly_  since the first time he picked up his brother's pocket knife. Of course he was going to die badly. It was the only way for someone like him to go.

**Author's Note:**

> You can come talk The Losers with me at my [tumblr](http://snowdarkred.tumblr.com/).


End file.
